Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

Council News:

This week, only The Grouch took advantage of my generous offer of link whorage and earned honorable mention status.

You can, too. Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply leave me a link in the comments section of the 'contact me' page on this site let me know it's an ‘Honorable mention’ and please include an e-mail addressno later than Monday 6PM PST to be considered for our honorable mention category, and return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week.

It's a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members. while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

I’ve said before that George Washington is my favorite Founding Father because he was reluctant to serve, and yet he rose to the great challenges before him. I can certainly see why he dreaded leaving his home on the Potomac. His servant's heart is an inspiration to us all.

When Piper laid the wreath at George Washington's tomb this afternoon, I wished that every American school student could be here to see and feel the spirit of our nation's first father. Even Piper was able to grasp the significance of being in the presence of our first President - who had such diverse interests - when she told me later "how hard he must have worked to keep that farm going!" And then she added, "And can you believe he was a commercial fisherman, from DC?!"

There's so much to learn and absorb at Mt. Vernon. Washington was a very busy man who had a healthy reluctance to serve as President after having dedicated so many precious years in service to others while he lead the military. When he accepted the call to be our nation's first chief executive, he served for the right reasons. Though he loved his home at Mt. Vernon so much, this self-taught, "non politician" was willing to sacrifice his passion for farming, fishing, trade and commerce in order to answer another call of to lead the new nation.

Visiting Washington's home today with fellow citizens from all across the country, including Maryland, Oklahoma, Michigan, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Idaho reminds us of our common bond. That bond can be summed up in Washington's prayer that you can find at his tomb. It reads in part, "I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have the United States in his holy protection...to dispose us all to do Justice, to love mercy...which were the Characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation. Amen." (June 8, 1783)

And amen!

I encourage every American to travel east to Mt. Vernon. Beautiful. Educational. Inspiring. Worth it. And the caretakers and tour guides there are superb. They're so proud that the estate, museum and gardens are privately operated and funded. Their patience with visitors and care for Washington's land and possessions is a testament to their passion for restoring a part of America's strong foundation. Their conscientious work is another reason to be proud to be American!

On this tour, when I speak of "fundamentally restoring our country," that means restoring it to the ideals found in our charters of liberty. What a great morning we just had seeing the collection of these founding documents at the National Archives!

Seeing America's most historic documents is inspiring, and speaking with staff members who pour their hearts into educating visitors gives us great hope that our nation's history will be accurately passed on to future generations. Many of the artifacts, recordings, and documents on display at the National Archives are evidence of the patriotism and hard work poured into our foundation. These are nonpartisan, valuable historical tools we all need to see, read, and absorb to learn the truth about our past, so we can move forward successfully.

Too often our leaders today behave as if our charters of liberty are outdated, flawed documents from a distant and irrelevant past. They treat our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution as if they aren't much more than old pieces of parchment with pretty words that can be twisted or ignored when it’s convenient. But these can’t be ignored! They point the way forward, like a needed compass that can guide us through the heady times we face as a country. These documents unite us! We ARE one nation under God, and we're indivisible if we follow the blueprints our Founders drew for us.

Apparently the bus tour is a sort of test run to see how things go and to get into the swing of things. Back in the old music biz days, it was quite common to do some gigs at smaller venues away from the major media cities just to work the kinks out and get used to playing live again somewhat under the radar before hitting the bigger cities, so I recognize the tactic.

I think also, that Sarah Palin draws strength spiritually from this country, it's sacred places and its history and heritage , and it could just be that she's amping up her courage and strength by hitting places like Mount Vernon and Gettysburg.

I've been to Gettysburg - you can't go there and not commune with some pretty courageous ghosts and spirits. You can literally feel it in the air, if you're at all sensitive to such things.

I think this is a major sign that Governor Palin is a step closer to jumping into the race.

While President Obama will undoubtedly get a polite and friendly reception in Poland, Walesa's feelings on the matter are a lot more indicative of what's really going on. In contrast to Bush Administration, which went out of its way to cultivate a warm relationship with Poland and what ex-SecDef Donald Rumsfeld referred to as 'New Europe', the Obama Administration has essentially them overboard in favor of appeasing the Russians and 'pushing the reset button.'

The Poles in particular had always been close to America. They understood that it was President Reagan's support for solidarity and his work with the Pope that playeda major part in destroying the Evil Empire that enslaved them, and Poland's joining of NATO in 1999 only cemented the close ties.

The Poles, like many other ex-Soviet colonies, saw the US as the ultimate protector of Poland's independence from Russian imperialism, something that strikes a deep historic chord in Poland.

It was Poland who was one of a trio of US allies, along with Britain and Australia, who sent troops to take part in the invasion of Iraq.

Their reward was to be unceremoniously sold out by President Obama, who repudiated the agreement in exchange for a Russian 'reset' that was supposed to include additional Russian assistance with Iran but ultimately nettedabsolutely nothing..since the Russians already had what they wanted, and could afford to sit back and chuckle at the president behind his back. And in an amazing display of ignorance and insensitivity, the announcement that the US was leaving the Poles and Czech twisting in the wind came on on September 17th, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's invasion of eastern Poland during World War II in collaboration with the Nazis.

To add insult to injury, when Polish President Polish president Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria, Solidarity leader Anna Walentynowicz,Poland's National Bank President Slawomir Skrzypek, Army chief of staff General Franciszek Gagor were killed in a tragic and somewhat mysterious airplane crash over Russian territory, President Obama did not attend, claiming problems with an ash cloud from a volcanic eruption in Iceland. But the presidents of Russia, the Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Georgia along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Horst Koehler,French President Nicolas Sarkozy,Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Norway’s King Harald V and Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves,Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, Slovakian President Ivan Gasparovic,Slovenian President Danilo Turkand and South Korean Prime Minister Chung Un-chan all attended and managed to make it in somehow.

The Poles, in consequence, have distanced themselves from the US to a degree. The new administration of Prime Minister Donald Tusk is noticeably more deferential to Russia, who supplies all its oil, and to Germany, one of its chief economic and trading partners.

The Poles simply realize that with President Obama in the White House, a US alliance is not quite what it was, and other countries in the region with the same realization have joined together in a military alliance outside of NATO known as the Visegrád Group, consisting of Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

The Visegrád Group ( named after a Hungarian castle where the leaders of the medieval kingdoms of Poland, Hungary and Bohemia met in the 14th century to try and put together a similar alliance) has actually been in existence since 1991 after the Cold War. What's different, and almost revolutionary is that for the first time, these countries have agreed to make it a military alliance as well, with Poland, the largest and most prosperous of the four in command.

The decision to create a joint military command is of major significance and shows exactly how these countries now evaluate NATO and the strength and resolve of the man in the White House.

I would not be at all surprised to see other nations join in. Serbia comes immediately to mind, as does Lithuania, but Bulgaria and Romania are possibilities as well if the Hungarians and Romanians ever settle their inherent differences over borders and tensions over the Hungarian minority living in Romania.

This bodes well for members of the Visegrád Group who are showing great wisdom in taking the initiative to provide for their own common defense. It does not bode well for the United States, burdened with leadership that adheres to the Obama Doctrine - disrespecting and distancing itself from its allies while appeasing America's enemies.

Over the weekend, the Egyptian junta formally reopened the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Hamas ruled Gaza Strip. This was done without coordinating anything with Israel, a violation of the 2005 Egyptian-Israeli accords on the Gaza crossings which call for them to be manned by European monitors and supervised by Israel.

Those accords were part of the security assurances Israel was given when Israel agreed to retreat from Gaza and were signed on to by both the US and the EU.

In response to Israeli concerns, Egyptian Chief of Staff General Sami Anan warned Israel not to interfere in Egypt’s internal affairs.

Anan wrote on his Facebook page that “Israel has no right to interfere in the issue of the opening of the Rafah crossing. This is an Egyptian-Palestinian matter.”

Another sign that Egypt plans to abrogate the Israel-Egyptian Camp David Accords was decision by Egypt's Oil Minister Abdallah Ghorab to liquidate EMG (the East Mediterranean Gas Company), jointly owned by the Israeli company Merhav (25%), PTT (25%), EMI-EGI LP (12%), and Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (10%).EMG is under contract to deliver Egyptian gas to Israel and supplied 40 percent of its needs in 2010. As part of the treaty, Egypt had agreed to supply natural gas to Israel at slightly below market prices, and a the contract was just renewed in 2009. Deliveries were made via a pipeline that was jointly built by Israel and Egypt from El Arish in Sinai to the Israeli port of Ashkelon.

On May 28th the Egyptians informed Israel that deliveries were not going to resume. The ostensible reason is that ex-President Mubarak and his sons are now in jail on corruption charges involving a rake off they allegedly took from the gas sales and the Egyptians are saying that the contract is therefore void, but the real reason in the Egyptian junta's desire to appeal politically to the Egyptian street, a major portion of which wants all relations broken off with Israel...especially the Muslim Brotherhood contingent.

Mubarak was fined the equivalent of $33 million by the Egyptian courts simply for cutting off internet and telecom access for a day or so during the revolt, and the eighty-year-old dictator is also scheduled to be tried for 'the murder of unarmed protesters' as well. He'll probably end up being executed after all his wealth that can be found is expropriated.

It's interesting to contrast the fate of Hosni Mubarak, who wasn't willing to use his military against his own people with that of Syria's Basher Assad, who was.

Of course, having the president of the United States actively work on your removal likely has something to do with it.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Governor Sarah Palin started off her northeast tour in Washington DC, as part of the Pro veteran organization Rolling Thunder's annual bike ride.

She got on her bike ( a Harley, natch) riding behind another female rider but was unable to move because there were so many members of the press snapping photos and such a large crowd who turned out to cheer here and the Rolling Thunder vets. Eventually the police were called also on motorcycles, to clear a path.

After moving just a few feet, Governor Palin dismounted to sign autographs and talk with the crowd. At one point she started discussing “the missing,” a reference to the soldiers still MIA — a key issue for Rolling Thunder.

Todd Palin drove another bike with Piper on the back, and Bristol rode on a third with another driver.

Believe it or not, there was some manufactured Palin Derangement Syndrome surrounding the affair, originating with MSNBC and 'reporter' Andrea Mitchell.She and MSNBC cohort Lauren Stephenson reported that Governor Palin was crashing the event based on an interview with Rolling Thunder's Ted Shpak ( a Democrat, of course) and using the headline 'Stealing Their Thunder' essentially accused Sarah Palin of using the vets group for her own political purposes.

Morrisey is polite and gives Shpak the benefit of the doubt, writing that Palin's accepting the invitation came late and that Shpak was probably not informed before Andrea Mitchell got her hooks into him. But Mitchel and MSNBC have no excuse whatsoever.

Anyone who know anything about Governor Sarah Palin knows how pro-military and how pro veteran she is. If anyone was hijacking the Rolling Thunder ride for partisan political purposes, it was Andrea Mitchell and the crowd at MSNBC.

President Obama lobbied the G8 nations intensely to endorse his notion that Israel should be forced back to the pre-1967 lines and to put the endorsement in the final communiqué of the summit.

He failed miserably, primarily because Canada's courageous PM Stephen Harper and the Canadian delegation adamantly refused to have any mention of the pre 1967 lines in the G-8 statement even though some other leaders wanted to include it.

Instead, the communiqué included an explicit endorsement of negotiations between the two parties to settle all outstanding issues, a defeat for the 'Palestinian' attempt sideswipe them and go directly to the UN.And not incidentally, a diplomatic defeat for President Obama.

Obviously President Obama has now backpedaled on any positive aspects of his AIPAC speech and is back to his original rhetoric.Luckily, that kind of cowardice usually falters when confronted by real courage.

Don't get me wrong. I understand we all have our bills to pay and that senior White Adviser on the Middle East Dennis Ross keeping his job depends on shilling for President Obama and his execrable policies towards Israel. But how far do you bend over?

Oh, I'll just bet they did. At long last, an American President with even more of an 'Israel problem' than themselves!

“It’s important for us to be able to use with the Europeans in particular the fact that there is a credible alternative, there is an alternative basis on which to pursue the negotiation,” he said. “It gives us an ability with the Europeans to say this is not the right way to go. You should be opposing any effort to go to the UN.”

Can he actually believe that the Brits, who are almost reflexively anti-Israel and the French, with hundreds of thousands of restive Muslims living among them are going to be swayed by that kind of nonsense? That an oil and trade hungry Europe is going to go against the Muslim bloc in the UN when in fact they rarely have in decades?

Ross also reportedly warned that the Europeans don’t always believe Netanyahu is “serious” about making peace and see the United States as the Israeli leader’s enabler.

Netanyahu not serious? The last time I checked, it was Netanyahu who was agreeing to meet without any preconditions and Mahmoud Abbas who was boycotting talks - at least until Abbas decided to ally with the genocidal Hamas.

And for that matter, we're the EU's enabler too, allowing them to spend their money on things like welfare for all those Muslim immigrants while the US foots most of the bill for their defense.

Of course,in the end it's all about elections and campaign donations. President Obama always was on board with the European approach towards Israel, which is most cases is essentially borderline hostility.And it would be even more skewed if it wasn't for the fact that Congress and the American people overwhelmingly support Israel. Ross is mouthing the most pathetic and transparent lies simply to try and keep as much of President Obama's Jewish support as possible in line with the agenda.

Anyone even thinking of buying what self loathing and self serving Jews like Dennis Ross have to sell should ask themselves a question: if President Obama is this hostile towards Israel now,can you imagine how hostile he'll be if he happens to get re-elected?

The image of the Judas Goat comes to mind. It just remains to be seen how many sheep follow people like Ross into the slaughterhouse.

The bit Army Radio head being dismissed is because Army Radio, which is supposed to be non-partisan has been flirting with Leftist propaganda for some time now since this guy's been running it.

The Peace Now reference about Peace Now Lefty loon Yoram Oppenheimer saying that 'nobody understands rich white people like he does end with an EU flag...and the 'rich white people' in the EU, of course, are the primary funder of Oppenheimer and Peace Now!

The joke about the football ( soccer) crowd refers to the Arab custom of firing guns in the air at celebrations like weddings.

Yonit Levy is a Channel 2 newscaster of the Leftish persuasion.

In the every last bit, Mordechai Vaanunu is the Israeli traitor who revealed details about Israel's nuclear weapons program and Tali Fahima is a far Left Israeli lunatic who had an affair with Zakaria Zubeidi, Jenin chief of the terrorist Al-Aqsa Martyr's brigade, was convicted of helping to plan terrorist attacks against Israel and who later converted to Islam.

"This is probably the most dramatic we've seen as far as an injury in an animal that's survived this long," said Phil Doster at Birmingham Jefferson County Animal Control shelter, who is caring for Mason following surgery.

"For an animal just to show up on someone's porch after this time was pretty remarkable, especially with the condition he's in."

Well yes, it is. But then Mason probably knew his people needed him and he wasn't going to give up until he found them, or died trying.

The counterfeit bills were crude photocopies and weren't designed to fool anyone, so I would guess that the machines have a sensor that reports when they're running low and the photocopies were simply designed to allow Kioskli time to get out of town and make his getaway.

“He went into seven of these machines, took the cash out and replaced it with counterfeit, and not sophisticated, just simply taking some bills, placing them on the Xerox machine, cut them up and put them in its place in the machines,” said Steve Wagstaffe, San Mateo County District Attorney.

Once he had the cash in hand, Kioskli left town, and was already long gone by the time angry customers were marching into bank branches screaming about being scammed. It was almost a perfect crime.

But then Kioskli made two mistakes that are almost comical in their stupidity ( and please, no Polish jokes in the comments section).

First, he left without telling his wife anything, which meant she immediately made a missing persons report to the police.

If a guy wanted to bug out for a new life and was already going to dump his wife anyway, it would have taken someone with a fighting chance of a two digit IQ to figure out that feeding her some story about having to go out of town for a week or so would buy him more time for a getaway.

Second, Kioskli apparently was unclear on the concept of a successful escape. Now up to a point he did exactly what I would do in similar circumstances, look for someplace warm with no extradition treaty with the US, where $200,000 would make you comparatively rich and give you a nice stake to start over.

Unfortunately for him, the only part of that Kioskli figured out was the part about someplace warm.

After stealing $200 grand in cash and making his getaway, where did he flee to ?

Phoenix, Arizona.

I kid you not.

And that's where he was caught, at a routine traffic stop.

“Reported as a missing person, he went into the ‘Wanted Persons’ category. Then of course the investigation followed up and they said, ‘Well maybe he isn’t just a missing person.’ And that’s what led them to say ‘Well there’s a good person to target as to who might have taken the money,’” said Wagstaffe.

In a way, I have some sympathy for Kioskli. After all, he wasn't doing anything that Geithner and Bernanke over at the Fed aren't doing, printing up a lot of counterfeit dollars and then switching them - pardon me, 'buying them' on credit - for T-bills purchased with real money.

After they finish their time in government, Bernanke and Geithner will go back to their careers on Wall Street. Kioskli? He sitting in jail in lieu of $25,000 bail, and is being charged with four felonies, including commercial burglary and embezzlement.

He's definitely going to have a new life, but perhaps not the one he pictured.

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week, carved eternally in the records of cyberspace.

This week, Israel was very much in the news after President Obama's speech demanding a settlement of the Israeli-Arab conflict based on the pre-'67 lines and Israeli PM Netanyahu's worthy riposte. This week's winner, Bookworm Room, took a look in her fine piece Contemporary coverage of the Six Day War — clear-sighted and moral at actual media coverage of the Six Day War to remind us of how far the media has fallen and how the 'narrative' has changed.Here's a slice:

Given Obama’s obsession with the 1948 borders, this seemed like an appropriate day to resurrect some contemporary coverage of the Six Day War, culled from a commemorative issue that Life Magazine published back in 1967. (For those with long memories, I first published these excerpts back in 2006. It’s a shame Obama wasn’t reading my blog then.)

The commemorative issue opens by describing Nasser’s conduct, which presented such a threat that Israel had no option but to react. It makes for interesting reading, in part because it assumes a legitimacy to Israel’s 1967 preemptive strike. After describing how Pres. Abdel Gamel Nasser, speaking from Cairo, demanded Israel’s extermination, the Life editorial board goes on to say this:

The world had grown accustomed to such shows [of destructive hatred towards Israel] through a decade of Arab-Israeli face-offs that seasonally blew as hot as a desert sirocco. Since 1948, when Israel defeated the Arabs and won the right to exist as a nation, anti-Zionist diatribes had been the Arab world’s only official recognition of Israel. Indeed, in the 19 years since the state was founded, the surrounding Arab states have never wavered from their claim that they were in a state of war with Israel.

But now there was an alarming difference in Nasser’s buildup. He demanded that the U.N. withdraw the 3,400-man truce-keeping force that had camped in Egypt’s Sinai desert and in the Gaza Strip ever since Egypt’s defeat in the Suez campaign of 1956 as a buffer between Egyptians and Israelis. A worried United Nations Secretary-General U Thant agreed to the withdrawal, then winged to Cairo to caution Nasser.

He found him adamant. Plagued by economic difficulties at home and bogged down in the war in Yemen, Nasser had lately been criticized by Syrians for hiding behind the U.N. truce-keeping force. With brinksmanship as his weapon, Nasser had moved to bolster his shaky claim to leadership of the divided Arab world.

In contrast to the fevered, irrational hatred on the Arab side, the Life editors are impressed by the Israelis. Under the bold heading “Israel’s cool readiness,” and accompanied by photographs of smiling Israeli soldiers taking a cooling shower in the desert, listening to their commander, and attending to their tanks, Life has this to say:

With the elan and precision of a practiced drill team, Israel’s largely civilian army — 71,000 regulars and 205,000 reservists — began its swift mobilization to face, if necessary, 14 Arab nations and their 110 million people. As Premier Levi Eshkol was to put it, “The Jewish people has had to fight unceasingly to keep itself alive…. We acted from an instinct to save the soul of a people.

This weekend is the commemoration of Memorial Day.Take some time to thank G-d you live in a free country, and remember that it's only true because there were and are brave men and women willing to put their lives on the line to make it so and keep it that way.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

The House has reportedly indicated it's not going to let the Senate adjourn for a full recess over Memorial Day in order to block President Obama from making any recess appointments during the break.

Under the U.S Constitution, neither chamber can adjourn for more than three days unless both chambers agree to it.

Just ot show you this isn't without precedent, back when the Democrats took over Congress in 2007, they held Senate mini- sessions every three days during breaks to prevent President Bush from making any appointments, some of which lasted only seconds.

Good for Donkey, good for Elephant, to paraphrase an old saying about geese and ganders.

I live in an enclave of liberal and far-left people of the Jewish faith, and I am understanding enough to give them a pass on their vote for Obama the first time around. I didn't get it but I give them a pass.

I would hope, however, particularly after his speech on the Middle East today, that they do not make that same mistake a second time.

At some point a liberal ideology needs to give way to common sense!

Obama State Department speech

Today President Obama, in an outreach to the Muslim people, told Israel that in the name of Middle East peace they need to pull-back to the pre-1967 war borders and give up its "permanent occupation" of the territory.

It is through this move by Israel said the President, that the peace process with Hamas, Fatah, the Palestinians and even the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt can begin to take place in earnest. After all, this giveback is a key demand of the Palestinians.

The concessions the Palestinians need to make was made much less clear by the President.

The Obama Israel hypothesis in the form of a mathematical equation known as the transitive property

It went like this in case you are drawing a blank.

Transitive property: Ifa=b and b=c, then a=c. These are the variables:

President Obama may be having a hissy fit over Israel's borders, but a major foreign policy crisis is brewing over a Muslim Arab nation's aggression to forcibly settle a border dispute that was to be decided peacefully by referendum.

Last January 9, the mainly black African, Christian and animist southern Sudan voted successfully to separate from the North and is scheduled to become a fully accredited state this July. The vote was 98 percent in favor of secession and according to the 2005 George Bush-brokered Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the oil-producing Abyei region was supposed to hold its own referendum last January to let its majority African Ngoc Dinka population vote on whether to join the North or the South.

That referendum never was allowed to take place, because the Arab Muslim north knew that the African Dinka would vote to join the south. Instead, the North broke the CPA and invaded the territory, launching a well-planned invasion of the disputed Abyei border region. Tanks, troops and government warplanes were used to capture Abyei, the main town in the region, and civilian villages were bombed from the air as thousands of residents fled their homes and UN observers accused the Sudanese troops of deliberately burning and looting .

The Government of South Sudan (GOSS) called the North’s seizure of the town of Abyei “illegal” and said it will defend itself. The country is again on the brink of civil war, which is probably exactly what the Arab Muslim North wants,since they are far better armed than the South thanks to oil deals with China and a mutual defense pact with Iran.

The White House immediately issued a statement condemning the Khartoum government over its use of force and called the North’s invasion “blatant violations of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement” that “threaten to undermine the mutual commitment of the CPA parties to avoid a return to war.”

“The United States calls upon the SAF to immediately cease all offensive operations in Abyei and withdraw its forces from Abyei,” the statement read. “Failure to do so could set back the process of normalizing relations between the Sudan and the United States and inhibit the international community’s ability to move forward on issues to Sudan’s future.” But thus far, nothing more.

The North Sudanese regime is headed by President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, who is under indictment by the International Criminal Court(ICC) for genocide in Darfur.At this point, Al-Bashir obviously intends to hold on to Abyei and the oil, not only to keep the oil profits in Arab hands but to weaken the South so that it becomes a failed state that can be coerced back under Northern rule later.

Al-Bashir has already cancelled meetings with a visiting United Nations Security Council delegation and informed the UN that their observers will have to leave Sudan on July 9, when the South’s independence takes effect.Without any UN witnesses, Al-Bashir can continue to ethnically cleanse black Africans and repopulate the region with Arabs.

So far, aside from the statement above, The Obama Administration has not done anything about this situation.And the UN obviously won't because the Muslim bloc there will protect Al-Bashir.

President Obama enjoys a high degree of support among black Americans. It will be interesting to see how they continue to justify that support if this president appears to value black lives in the Sudan less than Arab Muslim lives in Libya.

Believe it or not, Antonio Cosme Velasco Soriano, 69, only received a nine year sentence for snatching a 13-year-old girl off the street when she was shopping for her mother and raping her at knife point. There was no serious doubt that Soriano had done the deed, and the sentence represented a plea bargain.

Apparently he was let out on a three-day pass and returned to his home town of Benejúzar. While he was there, he passed his victim's mother in the street and taunted her about the attack, calling out "How's your daughter?", before heading into a crowded bar.

Mom returned to the bar, turned Soriano around to face her, pulled the bottle she was carrying from under her arm, poured it over him and then lit a match.

Soriano suffered 60 per cent burns on his body in the attack and survived for 11 painful days before succumbing to his injuries.

The mother fled to Alicante, where she was arrested the same evening. When she appeared in court the next day in the town of Orihuela, she was cheered and clapped by a crowd, who shouted "Bravo!" and "Well done!"

The woman claimed to have no recollection of the attack.

I have no information on how the case was ultimately disposed, but I ask you - was she right or wrong? What would you do if someone scarred you and one of your children for life and was walking around free as a bird and taunting you about it?

More to the point, do you think that this incident might make potential rapists in this little corner of Spain think twice before hurting someone?

"I want to make sure that America is put back on the right track, and we only do that by defeating Obama in 2012. I have that fire in my belly." - Sarah Palin to Greta Van Susternan, last week.

Governor Sarah Palin has been biding her time, and it appears to be paying off. The new Gallup poll shows her just two points behind frontrunner Mitt Romney among Republicans, and that's with her still not officially in the race.

Another sign that she may be gearing up for a run is a new documentary made by conservative film maker Scott Bannon that will premiere in Iowa next month, as well as in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada - all early primary states.

The movie, entitled "The Undefeated" came about when Governor Palin contacted Bannon about making some videos focusing on her work as governor of Alaska. After doing some preliminary work on the subject, Bannon said he would not only produce a full-length feature film about Palin, but that he would finance it himself. Ultimately, he reportedly spent upwards of $1 million in the process.

Conroy said, "A lot of people, even Sarah Palin's biggest fans, don't really know anything about her record in Alaska. And that's really what the film focuses on. Her record in Alaska as governor for the first two--and-a-half years that she was in office, the only two-and-a-half years, was very impressive for the most part. She accomplished a lot on oil and gas issues. She really was the kind of maverick that's now become sort of a cliche. But that's what attracted her to the McCain campaign. She had approval ratings that were consistently above 80 percent. And she accomplished a lot for the state. She was really a transformative governor in a lot of ways."

"So I think what the movie tries to do is it tries to reintroduce her to people who may have already written her off. You know, she became sort of a firebrand for conservatives in the campaign in 2008 and afterwards. But this is really going to try to recapture her independent streak."

Bannon is totally correct..Governor Palin accomplished more in her two and a half years then some of her predecessors did in two terms, and ultimately she only resigned because of an organized and concerted attempt to bankrupt her and her family, because she was honest enough to admit that attempt was preventing her from doing what she promised to do for Alaska and because in Sean Parnell, she had someone she could trust to carry on successfully.

The film is still in the editing stages, but the above trailer shows how she beat down Exxon when they tried to hold on to valuable leases without drilling - and has a shot of her without those famous glasses and the up swept hair, incidentally!

I still say that if she gets into it, she’ll enter the race in mid to late summer after everyone else starts flaming out, and given what I see on the economic horizon, there's no doubt in my mind she could win the White House.

Jared Loughner, the gunman who shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen others at an Arizona political rally has been found mentally incompetent to stand trial by a federal judge.

Loughner wounded 18 people in the January 8th shootings, six of whom died.

What's at issue now is whether Loughner should be forced by court order to take drugs and psychiatric treatment that might help him regain competency so he can face trial, and the judge is asking for an evaluation before making that decision.

U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns' ruling means Loughner can be held for up to four months before another hearing to determine if he's competent to stand trial. If Loughner refuses to take medication voluntarily, the judge could order him to be forcibly treated.

Loughner will remain in custody either way, until he is judged fit to stand trial or "until he is no longer a danger to himself and others" to revisit the oft-used legal phrase.

Remember when the Angry Left regarded Lougher as a Tea Party activist under the orders of Rush Limbaugh and talk radio? Talk about crazy...

Mubarak and his sons, Gamal and Alaa will also face corruption charges.

The new regime acted to head off a massive protest aimed at forcing the regime to take harsher action against the Mubaraks,among other demands such as an end to the country's decades-old emergency law, the dissolution of municipal councils, and the creation of an advisory panel to the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

This is a way for the new junta, headed by Mubarak's former defense minister, to throw the mob a crumb to avoid dealing with the other demands and to put some daylight between themselves and the ousted leader.

Mubarak is being charged with “with premeditation” to kill “peaceful” demonstrators, and also with “inciting some officers and members of the police to fire their weapons at the victims, shoot them and run over them with vehicles, and to kill some of them in order to terrorize the rest and force them to relinquish their demands.” Over 800 people died in the protests.

The octogenarian Mubarak is still hospitalized after a heart attack, while his sons rot in a notorious Cairo prison along with other former regime figures waiting their turn for trials.Egyptian prosecutors said that a medical team was examining Mr. Mubarak this week to see if he was fit for transfer to that prison.

The net extended to Hosni Mubarak's wife Susan, who was ordered into a 15-day detention for questioning over accusations that she obtained illegal gain from her husband's position. She made deal with the junta to receive immunity from prosecution in exchange for handing over two fat bank accounts and the deed to a villa in Cairo.

No date for the trials has been set, and it remains to be seen if Mubarak will be dragged into court in his present condition.

As I mentioned before, he and his sons were just a little late getting out of Egypt.

Senate Democrats are expected to support a bi-partisan resolution rebuffing President Obama's call for Israeli borders based on the pre 1967 cease fire lines.

The resolution is being drafted by Orrin Hatch ( R-UT) and Joe Lieberman ( I-CT) and is already garnering considerbale support from senators in both parties.

The draft language states “it is contrary to the U.S. policy and national security to have the borders of Israel return to the boundaries of 1949 or 1967.”

Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke with the president on this one, speaking at AIPAC.

“The place where negotiating will happen must be the negotiating table — and nowhere else. Those negotiations will not happen — and their terms will not be set — through speeches, or in the streets, or in the media,” Reid told the audience. “No one should set premature parameters about borders.”

“Israel’s borders must be defensible and must reflect reality on the ground,” said House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) in a slap at Obama’s speech last Thursday. “Peace can only be achieved by a return to the negotiating table without preconditions.”

What they're doing, of course, is damage control, not for themselves but for other democrats to whom the mud might stick. Reid doesn't have an election to worry about for another five years, and Hoyer's seat is one of the safest in the House.

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